The Marine Corps: Red Sox Partnering With Japanese Team

The Red Sox have entered into a three-year partnership through the 2010 season with the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.  The partnership will include a collaboration on scouting information, statistical analysis and other components to assist the Red Sox in evaluating players from Japan and other Pacific Rim countries.  The organizations will attend each other’s Spring Training and fall programs (Red Sox).  Red Sox VP/Int’l Scouting Craig Shipley said, “A lot of teams have these agreements and it’s a piece of paper and it gets filed away in a drawer.  We hope to make this like a living, breathing, panoply of different endeavors.  And one that we’ve already discussed is taking a team of coaches this winter to not only Japan, but Korea, Taiwan, and China” (BOSTON GLOBE, 7/5).